Monday, September 9, 2013

Broken record and other distractions

I like this photo. Sometimes, I feel
i could just dissolve into water. . . 

I keep going to write the post about my son leaving for college, about how that leaves me completely changed and lost and melancholy and heartbroken. How life is the same, while completely different. How people liken it to losing an arm, but to me, it feels like I've lost a lung, and I'm here struggling to learn to breathe this new way.


In fact, I've been having breathing trouble lately. Related? Maybe it is.

Anyway, I've been meaning to write the post, but the truth is I feel like it's all been said before. Those of us who live and breathe through it know how it feels, and those of us who won't and don't, well, there's no way to describe how disconcerting it is to drive away without a child, to walk past his room and know he (or she) is gone. To wonder where the years went. To wonder if you'll wake up, and they'll still be little. Still be there.

And, yes, I know, they return with laundry on vacations, but we know inherently this is not the same.

Brothers on the car ride up to school. . .
pictures do speak louder than words.

It's the lament that makes me feel like a broken record: Time is fleeting. Blink of an eye. Cruel how fast it flies. . . 

Blah, blah, blah. Shut up, Gae. 

What more is there to do but move forward?

So, we do. We move forward. We write. We swim. We distract ourselves. We get on with things.

And try to make the most of each day with the ones who are still here in front of us. Even knowing, yes, knowing, they, too, will way-too-soon head out on their way.

the heartbreaking truth: this one will be skipping off soon, too.

In the meantime, we delight in their successes, their moving forward, the happy reports from a college kid off and running! And take steps (oh, the things we do...) to soothe the ones remaining here.

Substitute brother? Not exactly. But well worth
the nearly 9 hr drive that brought him home to him.


- gae